what is your name?
Michael Charles Sullivan
how would you describe what you do?
Professional Poet
what are you currently working on?
My third collection … Yet to be titled
what has had the greatest influence on your work?
I think the fact I am a manic depressive has coloured a great deal of my work – like most sufferers I am inclined to be introspective… In addition I have an above average IQ and an eye for detail bordering on the obsessive; to the point of being positively anal. Again a trait not unusual in the Bi Polar. All of which combine to fuel my slightly jaundiced but nonetheless brutally frank approach to my poetry.
what is the greatest misconception about you or your work?
That I have a ‘style’… I take each piece as it comes and am happy to explore ALL the poetic tools and styles and constructions in the creative tool box. Hopefully making each piece as individual as its subject matter. Odes to sonnets, rhyme royal to iambic pentameter…
what do you see as the main strengths and weaknesses of the medium you work in?
There is no medium more suited to the expression of those thing; emotions, sensibilities, passions and all things ephemeral than poetry. It pleases me to think of poetry as ‘painting with words’ – from the gentle and gossamer watercolours of Wordsworth to the works of Blake; carved deep and bright and glutinous in oils – forced into the canvas
with a palette knife.
Its weakness however is that the message in poetry is all too often received by people, the poetically savvy, who had already worked it out for themselves – while the wider audience it was intended to inspire rarely if ever actually read poetry. Sometimes it feels like I am trying to teach people to dance who can’t even hear the bloody music….
how has technology impacted upon the work you do?
Technology? I write all my work on the pc… I miss not at all the endless rewrites and the poetic confetti – the myriad screwed up paper balls that used to litter the study floor to ankle deep.
what’s the greatest piece of advice you would like to pass on?
Never dismiss criticism until you have considered it – it is how we grow as poets – it is what keeps us honest. But learn to differentiate between the genuine observation by the knowledgeable and the petty jealousies of the talentless.
where can we find you online?
what are you reading at the moment?
Dan Brown – The Lost Symbol & Tennyson – The Complete Works – Under Milkwood… Again.
what are you listening to at the moment?
Katherine Jenkins ‘Believe’ & BBM ‘Around the Next Dream..’
anything else we should know?
Any other information you need you can get straight from the ‘bio’ in the ‘preview’ section of either of my collections on http://www.lulu.com/sullivanthepoet where there are also cover pictures of both of my collections… Can send you a picture of me if required. Perhaps you would let me know Paul?